Recent reviews by UndeadZed

Difficult when you're first learning, but highly detailed.
I love building games and this one is a blast, I'm addicted.
All the different mods make it even better by either enhancing your gameplay or creating new challenges.

Pro-Tip: Drugs have side effects, some benefits outweight the negatives, but overall they sell for good silver. Pay close attention to your pawns if you grow or produce them.

Now that ARK:SE is practically done with updates, we wait for ARK:A and ARK2. I still love this game. While I'm not thrilled that ARK:A will be a whole new game to buy, I'm still looking forward to it, hoping perhaps there will be a little discount for owners of ARK:SE. :3

For the game review itself, I've racked up nearly four-thousand hours. My favorite part happens to be the breeding system, I love coming up with new color combinations with various creatures. I can only hope they'll improve on the system in the next two games.

The best part about this game? The mods! The modding community is so vast and there are so many creative additions to play with. Always be nice to your mod developers, they work hard for you, for free.

Honestly speaking, it's my favorite game. You may need patience with a few of the silly bugs that still appear from time to time, but nothing has ever really spoken out to me as unplayable. (My hard-drive says otherwise, it's almost out of space xD.) Mods don't count in this scenario, you're always subject to additional bugs with loading up mods. Remember, be nice to your mod developers, at all times.

Just got to remind yourself that it's a game, you're to have fun with it, and if you lose something like a base or a tame, the only thing you've really lost is time. If you enjoyed the time you spent building up that base or perfecting that tame, then that time wasn't lost at all. :)

Happy hunting!

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[Old Review]
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Single Player:

This game offers a pretty good variety of ways to play. If you like taming, you can go out there and tame the best of them. If you like hunting, there are many ways to gather meat. If you're up for building, you've got several kinds of basic building blocks to work with and can make anything from a house to a fully fortified castle. There are caves to explore, oceans now have loot crates and make it worth it to explore, resources are abundant and there is no shortage of stuff to do even at max level.

Others may say there is no end game, but the game is still evolving. It is en early access and they add things, optimize and balance very often.

You can also edit your single player save just as others edit unofficial servers.

Multiplayer:

PvP is different. It does turn into base raiding and muscle flexing. There isn't a lot of room for lone players in a PvP environment, unless you plan on going guerrilla. Even then, it's tough.
If you're a part of a PvP oriented tribe, it can be fun or frustrating, depending on several factors. Are you okay with others raiding you? Are you okay with thieves? Are you okay with griefers? If you're okay with any of those questions, you may end up being able to handle PvP. Raiding a base of a bunch of griefers and getting tons of loot, can be rewarding but repetitive. It's a game of who has better defenses.

Multiplayer PvE can also be frustrating, but if you find the right server to play on with the right people, I find it much more fufilling. PvE does not prevent thieving or griefing. You will need to combat these issues even if you can't kill the cause. A server working together to take down bosses like the Dodorex or helping others with wandering Alpha Raptors brings a sense of community to ARK. I'm not saying these things aren't present in PvP populace, but I have found more people working together on PvE unofficial servers.

Roleplay:

I haven't really found anyone roleplaying yet, but with the amount of stuff you can make plus the size of the maps, not including mods, I can see this being a great platform for RP.

Mods:

There are hundreds of mods and more being uploaded daily. If you want to ride a dodo, they got it. Want new weapons? They have those too. Using UE4 and the Dev Kit plus several tutorial videos online, you can even make your own mods.

TL;DR
Like dinosaurs and guns? Buy this game. Don't like picking berries or dying? Don't buy this game. Overall I have fun with it but it's not for every computer.

I do like this game. I really do, but please read on for my honest review.

When I first played I accidently killed my friend trying to defend him from a bear and got flagged as a murderer. Then some random yellow name came up and murdered me in return. He doesn't get flagged. He took all the apples I got from punching trees too. I was left with a fear of other players, a few twigs and an empty stomach.

There were buildings everywhere. Buildings with stone walls, buildings with wood walls and some with no walls. Then I saw these little smoking squares on the ground and tried to pick one up. 'Trace of Evil' it said. I didn't really know what it was, but I moved on and found a little flat piece of land to call my own. Starting to build was fun. I found it really exciting. The ideas were all worked out and despite the poor translation of many item names, I managed to figure things out really easily. The controls were pretty intuitive and I liked the idea of not tab targeting enemies.

Those kobolds really hurt when you're punching at them nude.

After I got a nice little tent set up, a campfire and a couple fences my red name turned back to yellow. Feeling a bit more comfortable, I ran off and started to explore, picking up all sorts of resources and coin to help me along the way. The night time was really rough, I didn't realize there would be so many zombies and skeletons attacking my tent. When morning came around I had managed to die a couple of times and could not figure out how to repair my tent.

Another yellow name came along, he had a full set of armor and backpack and adorable cat ears. I asked him how to repair my tent and he explained to me. Of course, you hold your money in your hand to repair a broken tent. Why didn't I think of that?

I thanked the kindness of this stranger, right up until he opened my tent and proceeded to take everything I had gathered, leaving me with two stacks of twigs and the firewood in my campfire. My stomach growled.

After I realized you could make locks, I never stopped. Tinkering became my hobby and I was really enjoying the torches and lanterns it provided. I moved to a new location that had more resources, because the runs to gather copper was draining.

My new place started to get some walls up and I had cabins, it was looking pretty good. A tiny farm, a few chickens, it was great until some neighbor moved in right next door. I had asked her why she kept trying to look at my locked tents and why she kept taking my chickens. She didn't speak any english but it looked like Portuguese when she responded, I'm not sure what she said. However, her town built up faster than mine and even though I invited some friends, I never really managed to get my walls closed before the real raids started.

It only took two of them, but without armor and strong weapons we were defenseless. They moved in, destroyed our walls, our cabins our gates. Flattened our fences and worktables. Stole water from our wells (I know now you -can- lock a well) and used it to run around and murder us repeatedly. After about an hour of this, they left us alone. I repaired, managed to get another crude knife, continued to go about my daily routine, though a little shaken up.

Then they did it again, this time with more people. We were flattened in thirty seconds, murdered in less that and they proceeded to stick around and wait for us to respawn over and over again, scouring the woods and seeking us out to murder us some more for hours longer. I finally just logged out.

The next day, I went in to realize that there were traces of evil everywhere. The portuguese speaking woman had her base leveled and so did everyone else we could see.

Decided to move again.

After we moved, we had a great time. Skills were going up, we were trading, selling, making new friends. I had no problems with anyone but a few random rednames who tried to steal. Copper was harder to come by, but it was okay, I didn't mind spending over an hour to get an inventory full. I gave to the new players, helped my neighbors by repairing their walls, defending friends against an onslaught of raiders.

Then the griefers came again. A new town, a new place and new walls with a guild hall. At first I didn't believe it. Everything was stolen from once again. My towers had no arrows, my cabins were empty and even the tree I planted to look pretty, was chopped down. What was so shocking though was, all my walls were still intact.

Did they break in and take everything but was kind enough to repair the wall after they left? The gates were all locked as well, I was at a loss.

However, each night, the same happened again. This repeated for three days. (My livestock was stolen by my "friendly" neighbors). On the fourth night I logged in about the time that the trace of evil had said and watched it. They weren't breaking down my walls, they were ghosting through them! I had never seen that before. He just walked straight through and stayed yellow named as he proceeded to take everything again with a constant onlsaught of 'u mad bro?' and 'lol' as I watched.

I logged out and haven't been back online since.

The PvP of the game, doesn't bother me. I had no real qualms with the occasional raid, the occasional thief and even the yellow-name brazilians. What finally got on my nerves was the amount of consistant and repeated griefing that makes the game near unplayable. The straw that broke the camels back? The hacking. I have no idea how he did it or what exploit he was using, but there was no consequences for that person repeatedly taking from me and going around the system to do so.

The game is great, it's fun and if you want to risk it, I would highly reccomend you do so. For the price? Not so much. The upgrade gets you a tiny little backpack and a hairstyle, it's not worth it. It is not worth its current list price, even at early access.

I know the developers are working on it. They are a team of three with only one community advisor to translate for them. They threw their game to the sharks and the players are feeding. I'm sure they did not realize what horrors would transpire as they put their game on Steam.

It is too early though.

I really enjoy playing this game and with each DLC release, I enjoy it again. Great replayability.

It's pretty fun. Highly addictive and has a good number of mods available.

Takes a little time to get used to melee combat. Capture is inevitable.
Even if the graphics are low, the game runs smoothly. Not a lot of bugs.

It is in Alpha.

However, I have had fun with it. It's got a nice edge to it, gives your heart a start when you're sneaking through the wilderness and one of those zombie dogs jumps out of nowhere trying to rip into your throat!

Sound effects are great and a good part of the game, not just for show. Yes it is a crafting game simmilar to minecraft, but there are tons of recipes for such an early part of the game. It can be buggy, but I haven't found any bug yet that affects my fun.

Recommended.

Added at 128 hours:

Graphics are really coming along. Low end rigs can still play with smooth graphics and lovely effects. High end rigs, the atmospheric effects and overall realistic approach they are going for make this game beautiful. Keep it up Fun Pimps!

Added at 411 hours:

Alpha 17 added a ton, it took a while to put together this update, but it's excellent! More PoI's, better zombie AI, loot is less, but better quality, feels good when you find something. And the lighting.. sooo much better. Revamped perk system, buff system, mods for weapons and armor, more vehicles and a stealth system that works!

Keep it up TFP. If this is still Alpha, I look forward to release.